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Doctor
If you like to help people, solve mysteries, and take things apart only to put them back together, this career may be for you. Doctors work to understand how the human body functions and to heal it. Doctors usually specialize in one specific area of medicine: some study diseases and try to find cures, some monitor pregnancies and deliver babies, and others work with police to determine causes of death in murder victims.
Whatever type of medicine a doctor practices, it helps to be good at math and science and to like going to school. It’s a long road to becoming a doctor, but in the end, patience means patients!
 Top Ten
Doctors Do It All
There are many kinds of doctors who do lots of different jobs, each requiring special skills and expertise. Here are ten types of doctors who work to take care of patients’ health, uncover new treatments, solve crimes and more.
ANESTHESIOLOGIST:
Anesthesiologists help patients to lose feeling or consciousness before surgery and to wake up again safely. Once a patient is asleep, or a small area of a patient’s body is numb, surgery can be performed without the patient feeling any pain. Anesthesiologists work closely with surgeons and patients, so they need to be good team players.
EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN:
Emergency room physicians care for patients who need immediate attention. These doctors know a little about many kinds of medicine so that they are ready for whoever walks in the door. Because their patients are mostly very sick, hurt and scared, emergency room physicians must be compassionate, prepared and cool under pressure.
FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST:
Forensic pathologists collect medical evidence for criminal investigations with the police. Often these doctors have to figure out how and why a death occurred. Since their patients are usually dead, forensic pathologists are medical detectives, looking for clues about sickness or injury.
MEDICAL RESEARCHER:
Doctors in medical research spend most of their time in laboratories. They perform tests and experiments to find treatments and cures for illnesses, resulting in new medicines and technologies. These doctors can work for years on a single medical mystery, so they have to exercise a lot of patience and possess creative problem-solving skills.
PLASTIC SURGEON:
Plastic surgeons operate on a patient’s appearance. Often they fix scarring or disfigurement on patients born with deformities or victims of bad accidents or fires. They may need to operate many times before getting the desired results, so they must be skilled at explaining the process and have patience to work toward a long-term goal.
PROFESSOR:
Before they start practicing, doctors go through four years of college, four years of medical school, and then periods of internship and residency – and some even go on to do fellowships! Along the way, other doctors teach them. Like any teacher, the best professors of medicine are great at explaining complicated ideas and keeping students interested in complex, detailed information.
PSYCHIATRIST:
Psychiatrists are doctors who work to treat mental illness. Mental diseases are often hard to detect because they show up more in a patient’s behavior than on a patient’s body. Psychiatrists need to be careful listeners and observers, and possess a great deal of compassion and insight.
PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICER:
Doctors working in public health team up with government or not-for-profit organizations to protect and improve the health of Americans or citizens of developing countries. They deal with health in the “big picture” instead of individual cases, keeping entire populations healthier and living longer than ever before.
SPORTS PHYSICIAN:
Sports physicians work to keep athletes in the best possible physical health. Because athletes demand more from their bodies than other people do, their illnesses and injuries are treated with special consideration. Sports physicians work with individual athletes, athletic teams or athletic associations to make sure that work and play progress safely.
SURGEON:
Surgeons help fight illness by performing operations on patients. Surgeons are good at taking things apart and putting them back together again without making any mistakes. Their work is precise and risky, so they must have steady concentration. Since surgery can be messy, they can’t be afraid of blood and guts.
How to Get There
Prescription for Success
- Pay special attention to your math, science and health grades. A career in medicine starts with a strong academic background.
- Ask your science teacher about extra credit projects, like dissecting a frog or a fetal pig.
- Ask you health teacher or your family doctor to introduce you to healthcare professionals who can answer your questions and point you toward good resources.
- Use your school or local public library to find information relating to medicine, science, anatomy and health.
- If you have access to the Internet, try these keywords on your favorite search engine: KIDS HEALTH, KIDS ANATOMY, KIDS SCIENCE, KIDS CHEMISTRY, KIDS BIOLOGY. There are lots of sites that offer information, games and experiments for health-minded kids!
- Get exposure to health care through volunteering at a local hospital. Talk to your parents about calling the hospital directly or search on the Internet for keywords like kids volunteer.
Activity
Don’t Be Chicken, Be a Forensic Surgeon
For this activity, you will need to be old enough to use a knife with supervision, or you’ll need someone who can do the cutting for you while you draw and take notes.
- Scrub in: Wash up and put on rubber gloves and an apron.
- Prep the patient: Place an uncooked whole chicken from the grocery store on a cutting board belly side up and wipe it down with a damp paper towel.
- Map the surgery: With a permanent marker, draw lines indicating where you will make your cuts so that you’ll be left with the following sections: two legs, two wings and a rib cage.
- Undertake the surgery: Taking care not to tear the skin and muscle or break bones where you hadn’t planned, make your cuts according to your markings. Continue to dissect your patient, separating the skin from the muscles and the muscles from the bones.
- Chart your findings: Mark down on a piece of paper what you find in each piece. For example, how many bones make up a leg? How many muscles? How many blood vessels did you come across? You may wish to draw diagrams of what you found.
If you can make it through this activity without getting too grossed out, you may be on your way to becoming a great doctor!
(Hey – don’t forget to clean up! Maybe in a few years when you’re a big surgeon there’ll be a hospital technician to take care of the washing up, but for now you’ll need to grab a soapy sponge and get busy.)
Q&A
Q. What are your favorite and least favorite parts of your job, and why?
Dr. Stephen M., who has been a heart doctor, or cardiologist, for the last 30 years, says:
My favorite part about being a doctor is a procedure called “cardiac angioplasty.” In this procedure, I use a TV X-ray screen to find where a patient’s blood vessel is blocked. Then, by feeding a long, thin tube, called an angioplasty catheter, into the vessel, I can promptly crush the blockage and fix the patient’s problem. It is very gratifying to take all of my years of training and use it to improve a patient’s health quickly.
My least favorite part about being a doctor is dealing with hospital politics. As a doctor, I have to share the operating rooms, laboratory space, nurses, vacation time – everything I need to do my job – with other doctors and hospital staff, according to hospital rules. This takes a lot of cooperation and compromise and has very little to do with healing patients.
CLICK HERE to download this career (PDF).
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